tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post5776388624323733265..comments2024-03-16T14:43:09.430-05:00Comments on Gentlemen of Leisure: Force in Focus: Shadows of the Empire Action FiguresAustin Gortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-41383330357135450942016-12-22T15:27:02.862-06:002016-12-22T15:27:02.862-06:00"And then on the rare occasion they did produ..."And then on the rare occasion they did produce a female character, she was usually packed one per case so you had to pay scalper prices at the local comic shop to get her."<br /><br />This makes so much sense. When I started collecting the Power Of The Force toys around '96/'97 I was never able to find a Leia figure of any kind and always wondered why. Like you, I wanted all the main characters so I could tell the most epic stories while playing with them. I'm pretty sure Leia was the last figure I managed to find of all the major ones. I remember looking online (First time I ever tried to buy anything online) and I found Leia figures going for insane prices. Then one day my mom, knowing I wanted to Leia figure, just happened to find one in a mall on a business trip and got it for me. Ian Millerhttp://ianjmiller.deviantart.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-17519115117625165252016-12-20T23:23:11.490-06:002016-12-20T23:23:11.490-06:00I used to get so annoyed by the philosophy that fe...I used to get so annoyed by the philosophy that female figures wouldn't sell. I was a boy, but I wanted <b>all</b> the characters in any line, regardless of gender. And then on the rare occasion they did produce a female character, she was usually packed one per case so you had to pay scalper prices at the local comic shop to get her. (That's how I got Rogue from Toy Biz's X-Men line, probably among others).<br /><br />Strangely, I think Playmates' STAR TREK line was the first series of action figures to represent female characters pretty regularly. They produced Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher along with all the male characters, and both were very easy to find. Subsequent years would see Kira Nerys, Jadzia Dax, Uhura, and many others alongside the male characters. (Though I seem to recall Ensign Ro was short-packed for whatever reason. Had to pay scalper price for her, too.)<br /><br />But then, sometimes I think I was an odd kid. I didn't just want all the major male and female characters; I wanted all the civilian characters too. I may have had figures of Spider-Man and a ton of his villains, but it always bothered me that I didn't have plastic representations of Mary Jane, Aunt May, Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, etc.Matthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14580725636327122073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-3746704258031713372016-12-18T18:10:27.257-06:002016-12-18T18:10:27.257-06:00I never knew that Rob Liefeld had designed a Chewb...<br>I never knew that Rob Liefeld had designed a Chewbacca figure. That’s hilariously ’90s.<br /><br /><i>// strict adherence to source material never stopped toy lines before //</i><br /><br />You say that with at least a <i>soupçon</i> of snark, I think, and rightly so, but it would be a sad, unimaginative world in which kids used action figures purely to recreate scenes from the movie-or-whatever that spawned them. My own playsets were gloriously amalgamated cross-property alternate universes. Which doesn’t mean that as cool as weapons and gadgets usually were I didn’t get all purist on occasion about variant costumes or accessories.<br /><br>Blamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07342343767763035991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-53197494218496668302016-12-14T10:42:46.193-06:002016-12-14T10:42:46.193-06:00Man, I'm pretty sure I had most of these figur...Man, I'm pretty sure I had most of these figures (Including the comics, the novel, and the video game). At the time, 10-year-old me was excited that there was a new, "official" piece of the Star Wars canon so I ate up every bit of it that I could. <br /><br />Then the Special Editions came out and that distracted me from SOTE, and then Episode I came out and it was all but forgotten. But yeah, I completely forgot how much merchandise was out there for this new property and how huge it was. Hell, a couple years ago I broke out the video game and actually beat it for the first time, and it still holds up.Ian Millerhttp://ianjmiller.deviantart.comnoreply@blogger.com